


Ophelia Was Murdered

by ScarTissue



Category: Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: But I don't think Jack's ok, Its just my personal opinon, M/M, Mild Gore, Suicide Attempt, TW: Suicide, just- don't read if you're squimish
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-02-06
Updated: 2014-02-06
Packaged: 2018-01-11 09:02:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1171210
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ScarTissue/pseuds/ScarTissue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If you ask him to his face, he'll insist that he's fine.<br/>And you'll believe him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ophelia Was Murdered

  
  
  


If you asked Jack to his face, he'll insist that he's fine.

  
  


Not that anyone ever asks, of course. He's the guardian of fun. Jack is the bearer of felicity, protector of all the joys in the world. He's supposed to be happy.

  
  


And he is. His raucous laughter echoes off Santoff Clausen's walls as he torments the elves, high on sugar and the mere presence of others. Tooth's fairies clamor for his company on their runs, if only for the hilarity. Even the tunnels leading to the warren sometimes ring with elated shouts as Jack slides on them like an iced roller coaster, hands in the air.

He can barely contain the manic grin that rises unbidden as the guardians simply sit together, reallivebreathingwarm people not a foot from him, talking to him. He is happy. He's fine.

 

Most of the time.

  
  
  


Jack knows its no one's fault. The Guardians didn't about him, didn't know he existed at all until not fifty years ago, and their unflattering opinion was duly earned.

He knows MiM is stuck on a rock in the sky, only able to speak to certain people. He knows.

  
  


But that doesn't help him much, in the short run, in the middle of the night when he can't sleep and its cold and dark and he wanders the earth over well aware no one's looking for him.

  
  


(Jack can feel the cold, can feel it burrow somewhere below his icy skin, tinging his heart somewhere deeper than can be dug out with a hot knife and a shaky, tight hand. Burned out by bonfire that crackles and squelches with popping fair skin into stringy cauterized muscle and bleached bones, that heals anew slow but always, always heals. Or ripped out by rocks gouging out his innards at the bottom of a cliff, bleeding lush red stolen life into the sea, then mending itself even as he tears and tears and tears at his scarlet stained stomach and thin ribs. He knows. He's tried.)

  
  


Jack desperately reminds himself of that when the urge strikes to throw his staff down and fling himself out of North's sleigh, cause he's so fucking sick of their damn smiling faces and whole souls that he wants to scream, to tear himself apart until he finally **finally** can no longer be put back together. Despair rattles in his chest like a violent wind, shattering across his bones and claws up at his throat to release the howling that screeches at him, in him, for God and MiM and the Guardians everybody to hear that _don't you see, can't you see I'm damaged, I was so alone for so long, I'm broken and you did this to me **look at what you did to me** -_

  
  


It's nobody's fault that he's alone. The cards fall to shit sometimes. It happens. And he's always been happy, always had fun because its all you can have on your own. No hope, no dreams, no wonder and no memories. He had freedom. He had fun.

 

(Something savage in Jack wants to give that back to them, a thousand fold. He hopes his memory will be poison in their minds, in their dreams. He wants them to wonder at their incompetence, their callousness, to feel his pain flung back at them every second of every day of every eternity, he wants them to be sorry they ever dared center themselves for what they did to him.

  
  


 

_Ask me if I’m fine._

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 _I hope you know what you did to me_.)

  
  


So he goes to the meetings, has tea with Tooth, drinks with North, talks to Sandy, gardens and paints with Bunny more often than not. Stays in the sleigh.

Tries with all the might in his scarred core to keep his smile unbrittle, unaccusing. It's nobody's fault.

  
  
  


If you asked Jack to his face, and don't look for the hot hate and guilt behind his hard eyes, for the blood in his tone and frost in his words, he'll insist that he's fine.

And you'll believe him.

 

**Author's Note:**

> My chest hurt writing this


End file.
